Really, It’s About the Food

Deep down, I love food more than I probably should (hence, the extra “baby weight” I’ve been carrying around for 10+ years). Food isn’t just about sustenance for me. It’s about gathering, expressing, and connecting with other people. Food is universal. It’s communal. It’s peaceful. It’s love.

I find solace in cooking and sharing thoughtfully prepared meals with people I hold dear. And I believe every amazing dish starts with quality ingredients. Not just any tomato will do in a scrumptious end-of-summer BLT. No, no. It must be the freshest, brightest, juiciest tomato, plucked from a vine hopefully in my backyard, but if not, a vine as close to my backyard as possible. I don’t think there is a more disappointing food experience than to bite into a sub-par tomato. Why bother?!

I loved my work with the Colorado Department of Agriculture, promoting Colorado Proud and Colorado-grown food and agricultural products. I was downright giddy when I had to drive five and a half hours across the state to the Western Slope to wander through peach orchards and vineyards, and taste the freshest produce you could imagine.

It’s hot and dry on the Western Slope. You get dusty, and you have to swat away gnats and flies with fury. Many people might be miserable talking about when the first frost of season will be or how many pieces of fruit you can process in a day. Or how far a particular farm’s distribution is, or which retailers and restaurants carry Colorado fruits and veggies and other products. But my heart sang…and my mouth watered. Because really, it’s always been about the food.

Wine grapes ripe for the picking.

A Colorado vineyard on the Western Slope

Palisade Peaches (or Rocky Mountain Gold)

All that brings me back to the original intent of this blog. I want to share my love of food and cooking with as many like-minded people (and hopefully a few converts) as possible. Yes, I want to continue sharing my travel, home and motherhood adventures, but I really want to talk about food.

It’s late summer, so across most agriculture country in the U.S., it’s harvest season. That means an abundance of fresh, local food, and it’s my favorite time of year to eat. In celebration of eating the very best, I’m sharing one of my favorite ways to use up peak summer veggies: Fresh End-of-Summer Gazpacho. Oh my god! I would bathe in this stuff if I could.

My version was inspired by a recipe I first found in a Williams Sonoma catalog, or it could’ve been an e-mail. I don’t remember exactly, but it was a recipe that used all fresh veggies. There was no canned or jarred tomato juice to be found. It sounded divine, so I gave it a go. I’ve probably made it 20 times during the past three summers, and I so look forward to it when I see the first bright, plump tomatoes appear in late summer. It requires a bit of prep work, but it’s otherwise easy, peasy. Give it a go with that extra tomato sitting on your counter. For this recipe, you’ll be so glad you bothered.

Cut your tomatoes in half and place the cut side on the biggest holes on a box grater (if you don’t have a box grater, go get one. Every proper home kitchen needs one. Seriously!). Place over a large bowl and grate the tomato down to the skin. The tomato skin acts as a barrier, so don’t worry about cutting yourself. Get as much of the flesh as you can and repeat with each tomato half until you have a thick bunch of tomato goodness at the bottom of your bowl. Throw in your chopped cuke, sweet pepper, red onion and Jalapeño and give it stir to mix all the ingredients together.

Take your jar of roasted red peppers and put them in a food processor or blender (again, if you don’t have at least a blender, get thee to Bed, Bath & Beyond immediately!). Process the peppers until smooth and pour directly into the bowl with the rest of your ingredients. Stir a few more times to blend. Add the salt, vinegar and oil. Stir, and taste. Add more salt and a little pepper if you’d like. Grab a ladle and some bowls and spoons, throw on a few cubes of avocado, dive in, and do as I do…dream of a tomato bath. Enjoy!

Since I’ve made this A LOT, I’ve learned a few things along with way. It’s true, chopping the veggies sucks, so like me, you might be thinking, “I can just throw everything in the food processor or blender, hit ‘go,’ and I’m done.” Don’t do it. You will end up with a veggie mash that looks a bit like what comes up and out of a backed-up kitchen drain after you’ve made a giant salad. Both a blender and food processor tend to liquify everything, even if you’ve carefully “pulsed” your ingredients. The only things you want liquified are the tomatoes and the roasted peppers. Everything else you want in nice, bite-sized chunks. You just can’t get that with a piece of powerful, electric kitchen equipment. I’ve found that a nice, cool glass of crisp rosé makes chopping veggies much more enjoyable. Trust me on this one.

Invest in and use good Sherry vinegar in this recipe. You don’t use that much, and once you’ve had good Sherry vinegar, you’ll fine yourself using it a lot. I store my good vinegars in the fridge, so they keep a little longer anyway.

I think this gets better after a day of chilling and sitting in the fridge. But you can certainly serve it immediately. I’ve eaten a big bowl with some grilled bread for a light dinner, or you can serve it as a first course or in place of a salad along with grilled meat.

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5 thoughts on “Really, It’s About the Food”

I’ve had the pleasure of having this gazpacho with you Jen; and it’s clearly made with love. It’s emblazoned as one of my favorite memories with you this past summer…
It brings so much gastronomical joy to every person you share it with (i.e.: Skyline party w friends!)